To kick-off the new school year and another year of National Lab Day activities, Marshall did two days worth of exhibiting at the inaugural event of the largest STEM festival in U.S. history!
The 2010 USA Science and Engineering Festival was the creation of Larry Bock and Ruth Keither. Larry Bock is the Founder of Nanosys Inc, a General Partner of CW Ventures, and a Special Limited Partner to Lux Capital, both $100M venture capital funds. He is on the Board of Directors of FEI Corporation (NASDAQ: FEIC), the leading supplier of tools for nanotechnology research. Having found and/or grown about 4 dozen companies, Larry has awards in entrepreneurship and innovation and the passion for more. He and Ruth started the USASEF because Larry was finding it hard to hire qualified American scientists and engineers for the high tech firms he was running and agrees with Jack Hidary and Marshall Barnes that the key to changing that is through the inspiration of the nation's kids.
The USA Science and Engineering Festival was a natural fit for Marshall and his SuperScience for High School Physics approach to reaching young people. As the Top STEM Professional for National Lab Day, he was already establishing a national presence for his STEM activities with students, which made him fit for the mix of performers, engineers, scientists, and others in the USASEF line-up.
Marshall Barnes was chosen by Larry Bock himself as a late addition to the USASEF after viewing Marshall's impressive SuperScience for High School Physics activities for National Lab Day and his emphasis on advanced concept science and technologies. Marshall's booth was not glitzy but emphasized the actual research that the visitors could take part in or analyze themselves. He had a VCR, TV, CD player, MacBookPro laptop and his own invention - the Visual Reduction Window and with that he shocked, startled and delighted visitors, even getting mobbed a few times!
On the TV monitor Marshall showed off video of his experiment to produce Nikola Tesla's wall of light which he also showed frame by frame analysis of on a lap top. He also showed an example of his fabled STDTS gravity drop, where a target falls faster than the speed of gravity when the STDTS field is turned on. The CD player played examples of his hyperdimensional music, used in an upcoming radio show theme and the soundtrack to a documentary on the reality behind Fox TV's FRINGE. The music features song elements that move around between the speakers and make you feel like the music is alive.
The biggest hit of all, and the one that caused the mobs was the Visual Reduction Window that made kids see through and almost completely invisible. Based on his famous research into invisibility, which is documented at the Santa Maria Experiment exhibit in the Santa Maria Education Visitor's Center in Columbus, Ohio, the effect of real life transparency before their eyes, delighted many of the youthful guests as well as their parents who were intrigued as Marshall skillfully explained how the effect is created and how his approach to invisibility is superior to those methods pursued by Duke University and others trying to do the same with metamaterials.
